Appliances or other types of equipment found in homes or residences are increasingly complex to install and to maintain. Installation manuals and fault finding manuals for modern electronics systems are complicated and verbose. Large displays are, at times, needed to show detailed error messages, and these are expensive and add complexity to equipment. Many types of equipment found in homes or residences have relatively small displays.
Examples of such electronics equipment include HVAC systems, home entertainment, white goods, life safety devices, or residential or commercial security systems. In all cases, this kind of equipment is increasingly complex to install, maintain, and repair.
For example, home automation systems, at times, lack adequate customer service capabilities when there is a problem with the system or the customer needs to be in contact with a representative. Because of resource constraints, such as system cost, memory, and processing power, a typical home automation system may only annunciate basic codes or texts to indicate any trouble conditions.
The customer would then have to search through the system manual or call customer support to get more information and instructions to rectify the problem. Depending on business cost constraints, the central station may take a while to respond to the customer's call or to dispatch a service technician.
In general, residential electronics systems, at times, lack a convenient method for the customer and the technical assistance team to be in contact for support. For example, there is not a quicker way for the customer to reach a representative other than to call using a phone or to turn on the customer's computer and use a web site.